For Students
You’re enrolled in CS 461, 462, and 463, the on-campus, three-term computer science capstone: one team, one project partner or mentor, and one project for the whole year.
Other capstone options (online CS 46X, the one-term CS 467, ECE 441/442/443, ENGR 415/416) are separate sections. The on-campus lectures share a time slot, so switching between CS, ECE, and ENGR is easy.
How You Get Your Project and Team
Section titled “How You Get Your Project and Team”Project partners (companies, nonprofits, faculty, staff, entrepreneurs) and students submit projects through the same portal. The instruction team reviews each one and lists the approved projects before fall week 0. You rank them in the Bidding Survey by Sunday of fall week 0, and teams are announced in fall week 1.
- Bidding: the default. You rank the projects and we do our best to place you on a top choice, but we can’t guarantee one.
- Team size: 3 to 4 students in the usual case. Teams run from 2 to 5 depending on enrollment and what the project needs, and the instructors balance skills and preferences across all of them.
- Friends: rank the same projects in the same order. That helps, but it guarantees nothing. The only reliable way to be on a team with your friends is to propose a project together before the term starts.
- Your own project: you can propose one of any kind, but it needs an approved mentor, who acts as your project partner for the year, evaluations included. You recruit one, or the instruction team can find one; sometimes the mentor is an instructor. If the proposal is accepted, you and any teammates named in the proposal are assigned to it automatically, and it may never appear in the public list. Submissions close when fall term starts, and every proposal declares whether the project requires an IP agreement, an NDA, or both. If your project doesn’t have a full team yet and not enough students pick it, we’ll place you on another project.
- Bidding with your own project: you still submit the bidding survey, with your project first.
- Reserving a spot: not possible, with two exceptions: you submitted the project, or your project partner submitted it in collaboration with you.
- Asking a partner beforehand: some project descriptions invite you to contact the partner with questions. Asking doesn’t reserve a spot; the instructors place students.
- Partner or mentor: a project a partner submitted comes with that partner. A student-proposed project has a mentor instead (faculty, an industry professional, or anyone who can move the project forward). A partner who is not technical might also need a technical mentor, who advises the team while the partner still evaluates it; the instruction team can help find one. Align expectations with them in your first meeting.
- Several teams on one project: some partners take more than one team. Negotiate with the partner what your team owns (an interface, a repository, or a milestone) and how the teams talk to each other, and write your team’s part into its Definition of Shipped.
- Outside the class: your team may collaborate with a separate ECE capstone team on a shared project, with a research group, or with people from other colleges, professional organizations, and online communities. Joining an ECE or multidisciplinary (ENGR) team outright means enrolling in that section instead of this one.
What You Do Each Term
Section titled “What You Do Each Term”- Fall: bid on a project, meet your partner, write the team charter, and build a walking skeleton. You defend your own contributions live, and you write an RFC.
- Winter: build and verify against real users; define what “shipped” means for your project and run an incident postmortem. Another RFC, another defense.
- Spring: release, measure, publish a landing page, hand the project off, and present at the Engineering Expo. A career retrospective closes the year.
Every term, your grade has four equal components, and none of them can be crammed into week 10. The assignments overview has the components, weights, and due weeks.
Lectures
Section titled “Lectures”Each week’s slot is a workshop, a guest speaker (industry, faculty, alumni who shipped something), a demo day, or no lecture at all. The schedule says which, what’s due, and what to read first. Check announcements for the meeting times and room.
If the Project or the Team Has to Change
Section titled “If the Project or the Team Has to Change”Both are possible, and both need your instructors’ approval, because both disrupt more than your own team.
Changing teams happens only when staying would be worse. Reasons that have justified a change are a conflict mediation couldn’t resolve, a skills mismatch large enough that you’d clearly contribute more elsewhere, and a multi-team project that needs its people rebalanced.
If a concern is building, talk to your TA or your instructors as soon as possible. We recommend working through the conflict guide first, because a problem raised early can often be fixed inside the team, and a transfer disrupts two teams. To change teams:
- Write to the instructors with the reasons and what you already tried inside the team.
- An instructor talks to everyone involved and decides.
- If the change is approved, both teams agree on a transition plan covering responsibilities, knowledge, and in-flight work, and the reasons, the decision, and the plan are written down.
- You’re then assessed on your contributions to each team for the time you were on it, and the grade may be adjusted for the change’s impact on both projects.
Pivoting or changing the project may also mean finding a new project partner or mentor. Teams pivot for reasons like ill-defined requirements, no product-market fit, a problem that turns out to be infeasible, data that can’t be obtained, a disagreement over IP terms, or an irreparable conflict with the partner. Your grade is based on the project you present each term, against the same standards throughout, so a pivot in fall leaves most of the year to meet them, and a pivot in spring leaves one term at most. If you suspect a dead end, say so in your next sprint note and TA check-in. To pivot:
- Write down the current path, why it isn’t viable, and how the new direction fixes that.
- Revise the scope, timeline, and roles for the time that’s left.
- Get your instructors’ approval, and bring your project partner or mentor along, because they evaluate your work.
- Restart from whichever point the new direction requires, and expect the extra effort.
Abandoning a project is a last resort. A team that invested substantial effort before factors outside its control ended the project may receive partial credit, based on an exhaustive postmortem submitted to the instructors.
The Pages You Need
Section titled “The Pages You Need”Questions Students Ask
Section titled “Questions Students Ask”-
Could this become a company? Yes. You hold the IP by default, you may keep the code closed, and the Project Handoff lets the successor be you. The grade rewards a deployed product with people using it on their own, so launch it publicly rather than building in stealth.
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Can I reuse my honors thesis? Probably not. Ask the instructors if you think there’s a match.
Resources
Section titled “Resources”The instruction team, at cs-46x-help@oregonstate.edu, approves hardware loans, AWS accounts, and project funds; Azure, high-performance computing (HPC), and iLabs have their own rules.
- Hardware: request it through the hardware inventory.
- AWS: shared accounts with a budget cap, wiped after spring term; ask the instruction team.
- Azure: some OSU departments host projects built for them; the department, not the instruction team, decides.
- HPC and iLabs: open to every engineering student after the mandatory training.
- The small budget for software licenses, user research, and light marketing, and anything not listed here: ask the instruction team.